Google Sheets - Conditional Formatting

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(Part of my administrative assistant series on Google Sheets.)

Conditional formatting is a great way to dynamically view your data, even while entering it.  Many people spend a lot of time highlighting data individually, not realizing that this feature is built in and can save a lot of time.

Conditional formatting can be turned on by going to the Format menu and selecting it from about 3/4th of the way down -

First you highlight the data you want to format.  You can click on an entire row or column, or even multiple rows & columns if you want to apply the same rule over a large amount of data.
Second you click on Add new rule -

There are several options that come up -

  1. The data range to which it should be applied (you can change it here manually if you did not highlight the correct data)
  2. The condition for formatting the cells - the list of your options is the next graphic below
  3. How you want those cells formatted
  4. You can even add multiple rules for the same data set on the fly
  5. If you want a color scale (multiple colors depending on the criteria range), there is another tab at the top to switch to


These are the conditional options, many let you put in the specific information to compare to -

The formatting will happen even as you change the options for your rule -

If you update your data, it evaluates it against the condition and will format it on the fly -

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